Mar. 14th, 2022

crossover_chick: Victor leaning over to look at a blue butterfly in a glass jar (CB: i has a happy thing)
Indeed -- woke up with much less brain fog this morning (proper night's sleep without Daylight Savings' lag, yay), and managed to get a lot done:

1. Keep editing Chapter 6 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Santa Monica’s Vale Of Tears”: Check! Made some good progress today – Alice has made it past the final guard outside (with the help of some Hysteria) and into the warehouse itself via the attic, picking up a class ring to sell later for the cash. She still has to get to the office, though – and the only way there is across some VERY skinny metal beams. Which she is currently inching along, hoping desperately that she doesn’t either fall or get spotted. Tricky prospect, but as this is only part one of at least four, I think she’ll manage. :p

2. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check – very easy today, as Call Me Kevin had to take a breather day as per his Twitter and didn’t upload. But I still had enough to keep me entertained –

A) First up, James Turner with another “Makin’ Money” Sims 4 scenario run – “I made $1,000,000 Simoleons by painting!” Or, rather, by using the digital sketchpad that came into the base game around the time of – Moschino Stuff, I believe, aka the branded pack that gets a pass from me as it made photography better. XD Semaj was set up with the Loner, Creative, and Loves Outdoors traits, and of course the Painter Extraordinaire aspiration, and sent to live on Key Point, one of the little islands in Sulani! Semaj made a “house” that was some flooring and a thatch roof to go over it for rain (and so he could get the Micro Home bonuses from Tiny Living), then added the Natural Light and Home Studio lot traits to the island paradise, then set to work catching fish to sell to fund the sketchpad!

And then he got an early catch of a voodoo doll worth $950, so he was able to get the sketchpad a hell of a lot earlier than he thought. And THEN it proved that drawing on the sketchpad was a HELL of a lot faster than using the easel, AND he was skilling up like crazy thanks to all the bonuses he had, so. . .yeah. By the end of the first couple of days, he actually had enough for a proper beach house (though it took a little longer to earn enough to get stuff like a shower, a small kitchen, and a bed) – and as soon as James remembered the painting selling wall from what I believe is City Living and started doing loads of yard sales with it. . .oh man. Between that and being able to queue up multiple paintings on the sketchpad, he was raking IN the money! There were a few bumps in the road – having to take care of needs; having to get an easel to do some emotional paintings for his aspiration (you can’t do them on the sketchpad for some reason); NPCs knocking over his outdoor bin in such a way it bugged out and couldn’t be picked up or used again; Bess Sterling constantly bugging him for money to fund her start-up (apparently she CAN give you a payout of $25K if you keep funding her, but it’s a low chance, and there’s also a chance she’ll just admit she can’t pay you back – best thing to do is maybe give her $1,000 once or twice, but then call her out for not paying you back and get what you paid her back with a bit of interest) – but the constant yard sales, completing the Fabulously Wealthy aspiration and getting the Shrewd bonus trait – leading to a surprise payout of $38K from investing one week – and, at the very end, selling back the expensive bed James got Semaj so he’d sleep less led to the million being earned in 12 days! Not too shabby! *nods* We’ll see what happens in the next challenge!

B) Then, because we had no Call Me Kevin upload, I instead went to his girlfriend Anna, and a video that my Recommendeds has been pushing on me – “Call Me Kevin tries to teach me Minecraft but I wouldn't listen…” Yes, as part of a charity livestream to help Ukraine, Anna (dressed in a sumo suit for – reasons) got Kevin to help her learn how to play Minecraft via the medium of Minecraft Bingo! Kevin being Kevin and Anna being VERY distracted, this did not go exactly perfectly. XD Kevin actually kept the chaos to a minimum to try and help his girlfriend figure out how to play the game – okay, yes, he started by claiming some trees have gunpowder in them and that if you punched them, they’d explode, but from THERE he did things like actually telling her how to make various tools (first wood, then stone), how to kill sheep to gather their wool to make a bed, and how to fight monsters. Which – did not stop Anna from dying twice and needing to hide in a hole to try and keep away from zombies and spiders, but he tried. XD They built a little house for her (Anna INSISTING on making a “doorbell” with a useless button), and then it was off into the wider world to gather flowers and rob a village for apples, bread, and leather armor. Then they made a campfire and cooked some beef and mutton over it (filling all four slots was a bingo square), and Anna cooked herself multiple times jumping over it. She did her good deed for the day by freeing a merchant trapped by a lava pool – Kevin promptly made her kill a bunch of cows and sheep to make up for it. And also to make a painting to hang up on her wall (which is apparently created with sticks and wool?? Doesn’t that make it a tapestry?). With that sorted, the only remaining thing to get a Bingo was to extinguish the campfire – so Kevin had Anna toss it in the nearby bay. XD I mean, it worked! Apparently you can just tap it with a shovel, but that did indeed work, sooo. . . Look, they’re both very silly people, and all this raised a lot of money for a good cause, so let’s not complain and just enjoy the chaos, all right? XD

C) And finally we went back to the Subs for GrayStillPlays and Road Draw (or possibly Draw Race, he said something different at the beginning and end of the video), a “stick figure torture” game where your stick is driving a vehicle and you must draw them a road to ride on to cause maximum pain to their enemies while not letting them explode or get stuck in random crevices. Or, if you’re Gray, you accidentally draw ON TOP of your character and make them glitch out, severing their body parts in amusing ways. XD Anyway, Gray committed a lot of murder and got a lot of coins for it, but he did struggle to get to the end of most levels, what with all the TNT, spiked balls, people shooting at him, TANKS shooting at him, random BOMBS shooting at him. . .there was a lot of shooting, is all I’m saying. XD But he persevered and managed to buy the most expensive item in each vehicle category, taking an APC through the military course (and smashing it up repeatedly); a Formula One race car through a zombie-infested graveyard (and smashing it up repeatedly); Spider-Man driving a dump truck through the Millennium Falcon (and smashing it up – less repeatedly than the other stuff); and finally getting through the Sea Wolf level with Spider-Man on a TRON lightcycle (and smashing it up just a little). He only actually made it to the finish line on those last two boards, by the way. The only ones where his vehicle survived long enough to get there! :) Ah, you gotta love games where stick figures find new ways to suffer. . .

3. Play Sims 4 and do some more save renovation/building, and maybe some Smiler playtime: Check, though it ended up focusing on Smiler times more than save renovation. I’m just having fun playing them! I DID replace another lot, though – the Plumbob Pictures Museum in Del Sol Valley. The vanilla one is just too sad. I found a good one by bvbaptista, which is nice, modern, and genuinely looks like a museum for movie memorabilia – there’s even a mini-movie set in there, along with a creating corner and a cafe area (though I did adjust the cafe counter a bit, as I didn’t think anyone could get behind it to sell pastries). So that’s good to have!

As for Smiler, as per usual they spent their day out and about. Started out with a trip to Forgotten Hollow and the Vatores – Smiler made good friends with Lilith, then met her brother Caleb and became friends with him. They also sparred with both siblings – lost both times, but what can you do? XD On the plus side, they caught some mosquitoes for their insect collection, and have developed a Great Reputation! So that’s nice. :)

Then, while Smiler was playing some chess with Lilith, I got the notice that the Flea Market was in town – followed quickly by a phone call to Smiler with Angela asking if they wanted to go and learn how to haggle. I was up for that, so Smiler went to meet her in San MyShuno (by Waterside Warble no less). They took a moment to up their vampire energy in the karaoke bar, then – having spotted a vendor selling frogs – flew over there to say hello and haggle. Their Focused mood must have given them a bit of an edge, as they were able to get 25% off, and bought a nice Striped Heart Frog for 8 bucks instead of 10. XD Every little bit counts! There was also an awful-looking striped Sally’s Shell chair for $75 that I had them pick up, because it seems to fit their aesthetic tastes. XD Smiler then met up with some of the people Angela was talking to, before luring Angela into one of the karaoke rooms at Waterside for a quick drink, om nom. They and Angela watched someone perform some karaoke, then Smiler did some of their own (finally skilling up to level 2) before departing on a new Odd Job – acting as a wingman for Cameron Fletcher! This went very well, and Smiler got $151 simoleons in total ($126 pay, $25 tip).

And then I had them change out of their dark form, as I figured they’d been in it long enough, only for their face not to change. To my irritation, turns out when I gave them their new Smiler-themed dark form outfit in CAS, it just copied it all over to their regular form. I do NOT recall relinking their dark and regular forms! *sigh* At least this was pretty easy to fix, and it wasn’t like I didn’t mind them having the outfit in their regular form too – just stop doing stupid shit like that, game!

Anyway, after resetting their regular form look (namely teeth and eye details, along with taking off the full-face “spiral eye” makeup) and redoing their lost outfit, Smiler went back to Forgotten Hollow to talk with Vlad, get some more training, then pick up plasma fruit and do some fishing. Caught a walleye and a minnow, and now they’re all set for when they start their job next play session! I’m just hoping we hear about their university application soon too – I want to start the Foxbury stuff!

4. Work on tumblr drafts (specifically the Smiler Always update for Wednesday): Check – prioritized this this morning! Listened to the rest of that Valice playlist I stumbled across the other night (nothing offensive to me, whew) and put it in the VictorLuvsAlice drafts with my comments, then got the majority of my Smiler Always Chill Save Update done before lunch, wrapping that up after we’d eaten. And then, this evening, right before coming here, got a few more edits made on the “facts” post I’m making for my human!Smiler so people can better understand my ridiculous roller coaster OC and how they’re getting shipped with my OTP. XD

5. Get in a workout: Check – yup, finally got back on the bike again! And finally getting back on the bike also means finally getting back to the Oxventurers, with their end-of-2019 adventure, “Peak Performance!” This is actually a four-parter, and I was able to finish the first bit today as it was almost exactly 33 minutes, aka the usual length of one of my workouts (30 minutes doing the ride, 3 minute cooldown). The Oxventurers, still bumming around Necropolis-On-Sea and the Milquetoast Ancestral Pirate Home, have once again been contacted by the wizard Binbag to stop a great evil disturbing the balance of nature – this time on a nearby frozen mountain peak! Corazon, naturally, was not keen on going, but the others were ready to be heroic (Merilwen, Dob, Egbert) or to figure out how to either learn from the great evil or defeat it to prove they were a greater evil (Prudence), so off to the mountain they went, with Bismuth (who was HOPING for a nice tea with Binbag) acting as sherpa and carrying their tent and suchlike to make a base camp. The very start of the trip was nice and calm, with clearly marked caches and messages for adventurers – though one Druidic message revealed the somewhat-concerning fact that the mountain has a sleeping dragon upon it. And you are NOT to wake the damn thing. Everyone was a mite concerned, but once Merilwen pointed out it probably has some gold, Corazon was all for getting himself a “Smaug Mattress.” XD

Anyway, the gang ended up splitting up into two distinct groups to scale the mountain after some “who’s tying themselves together” shenanigans – Prudence and Corazon, with Corazon following after a spider-climbing Prudence; and Dob, Egbert, and Merilwen, with Dob and Egbert riding upon Octowen as giant octopuses are surprisingly good at climbing sheer cliff faces. XD Dob and Merilwen heard something in trouble along the way, though, and investigated to find a wolf, Remus, caught in a nasty snare. Merilwen cast Speak With Animals to talk to the wolf and reassure him, while Dob got him out of the snare and cast Cure Wounds to heal the damage (Egbert staying back because, well, he was wearing his coat made out of eighty wolf pelts that he picked up for the masquerade party adventure). Remus – who started off Geordie while in the trap but quickly affected a different accent once freed because Johnny was already starting to regret their life choices – thanked them a bit begrudgingly and asked that they not spread it around, warning them that there were probably more traps (and actually planning on finding one to eat whatever might be trapped inside). So that’s a thing. Also a thing? Prudence and Corazon coming across a nasty little ice imp creature on THEIR journey upward. The damn thing insisted on shrieking at them, though fortunately this did not wake the dragon. Unfortunately, at least for them, it does mean that it’s time for roll for initiative! We’ll see how that goes in Part II, starting tomorrow!

Additionally:

-->Answered my friend Ace’s FF.net PM! Darn site didn’t send me an e-mail for this one, so I only found out about it recently. *grumbles* Ah well, given our usual back-and-forth, at least I’m not really late. :p

*nods* Full day, few complaints. And it is very nice to have the sun set later in the day again. :) I love how I love vampires, and yet I hate when it gets dark out earlier. XD I am complex and contain multitudes, I guess. . .

Anyway, time for me to wrap up here and get to bed -- back to work for the next four days! Hopefully I don't have any major crises waiting for me tomorrow. . . *fingers crossed* Night all!
Page generated May. 30th, 2025 08:16 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios